Morning journal and courier., 1887-11-28

| the State to do it? By distributing the land
reply one set of theorists, who in Ireland are
a majority, and in England are becoming SO
numerous that they carry their dogma into
| almost every Radical meeting. Well, the
United States has done it, Under the most
perfectly Socialist law ever devised by states
men, any man within the Union can claim
one hundred and sixty acres for nothing, can
do with them what he pleases 80 long as he
cultivates, and cannot be wholly deprived of
| them by any amount of debt. Has that law
destroyed, has it even perceptibly relieved,
misery in the great cities of the United
States? Let philanthropists like Mr.. Brace,
statists like Mr.. Wells. Socialists like Mr..
George, answer the question-and they will
all say with one voice that the misery seen
in the great cities of the Union rivals in
depth, and exceeds in the humiliation caused
by contrast, that existing in the great cities
of effete Europe. Or shall the end be at
tanned by State allowances in cash, granted
to the poor because they are poor, and given
not as charity, but a grant to which
they are entitled? Well, we ourselves did
that very thing. Under the old poor law
every man was potentially an annuitant, the
unemployed were entitled as of right to
work. every woman and child who claimed
it was granted an allowance in money, and
the consequent depth of the peoples misery
passed anything of which this generation has
any conception. The majority never saw
had the system continued England must
have gone out of cultivation. Or finally
shall we ask the State to find work for all,
work they really can do, not stone-breaking
or other task which only tests the sincerity
of the applicant? Such of the unemployed
as think, all the moral-force Socialists, and a
great many most sincere if dreamy philan-
thropists, answer this question in the affirm
alive; and let us therefore lock at it little.
There are in this wilderness of houses round
us at least six hundred Thousand adult males
VINO i've IN fair content upon the fruit of
their daily labor, and there may be fifty
Thousand who can, from time to time, de-
scrloe themselves as unemployed-as honest
WorkmeR starving because they have no
work. 1t would not seem impossible to give
| them work, but there is condition-which
| they themselves, to their credit be it spoken,
| aecept-that it shall be productive work, for
| otherwise the six hundred thousand must be
| amerced or taxed in a portion of their wages.
| Now can any human being suggest q piece of
productive work-the reclamation of waste
| land is not now productive-which can be
given to the unemployed to do? We know
| absolutely of none. If they are given the
State work-army clothing and tents for ex-
| ample-an equal number of the artisans who
| now make those things must be thrown upon
| the rates or suffered to starve. If any trade
| is left to them those who work in it must be
| dismissed to make room for them; if all
trades number from each; for as the old
| poor law showed, the competition of free Ia
| Dor with subsidized labor is a mere impessi-
bility. The work required is already done,
| and to give it in charity to casual hands is
simply to take it from those who are work
| ing regularly The latter may consent to
| give up portion of their work for the bene-
| 6t of weaker brethren; but then it is they
1 not the rich, who must consent. for they
hold all voting power.